The concept of tamper resistant or safety containers is old in the art. The need for safety containers arose because each year many children die from accidentally ingesting prescription or nonprescription medicine. To avoid unnecessary death of children, container manufacturers have made containers that are difficult for children to open. Unfortunately, the containers have also been difficult for the elderly to open. Consequently, the elderly have been forced to leave the medicine container uncapped or to place the medicine in other containers that were not child-proof. As a result the safety containers, although effective in preventing children from opening the containers, become ineffective since the elderly oftentimes cannot use them. Thus a need exists for a safety container that is usable by the elderly yet prevents children from opening the container. Because the muscles in the elderly deteriorate from nonuse and age, it is difficult to make a tamper resistant container that the elderly can readily open. The present invention utilizes the muscles in the elderly that are used on a daily basis for such activities as eating, writing, and picking up items. One such set of muscles that are used on a daily basis are the muscles of the finger and thumb that are used to grasp objects.
In my copending application (Ser. No. 170,309) I disclose an invention that provides a tamper resistant or safety container that permits the elderly person with diminished physical coordination, strength, and skill to open the container yet still prevents young children from opening the container. The invention disclosed in my copending application has an inner container and an outside container that permits an elderly person to use the well established conventional motor skills used in opening a screw top container yet because of the requirement that container needs to be grasped and held in a particular manner and at specific regions on the container virtually precludes young children from being able to open the container. The embodiments of my copending application with the inner and outer containers are illustrated in FIGS. 11-20.
In the invention described in my copending application four motions occur at the same time. With one hand the user grips the outer container and applies pressure at specific regions on the container and with the other hand the user grips and turns the cap. The functions required to open the container are divided between both hands which is better for an elderly person who may lack sufficient hand strength to perform more involved steps that require exertion of unusual force with one hand and very little force with the other. The invention permits the elderly to use a more comfortable hold and squeeze motion rather than a squeeze and turn motion found in prior art safety containers. In addition very little torque is required to open the container since the cover mates with the container in a conventional manner. Also, because of the natural way the hand is placed on the container the squeezing motion is easier to apply to the container than it is with prior art devices that require the cap to be squeezed and turned at the same time.
The present invention uses the same motor skills with a single container having a slip ring and a cover that can be lifted off or turned off by an elderly person yet is difficult for a youngster to remove the cover.